He dashed inside, wiping his hands on his pinny as he went. When he returned he stood on his step, hiding something behind his back.“Do you cook a lot of chicken?” he asked.“Not really, occasionally” I said.“Well, I’ve got just the thing” said Vincent and, with a slight flourish, he produced one of those shallow tin trays that chickens come in when you buy them from a supermarket.“Marks and Spencer”, he said, “It came free with the chicken”."Thanks" I said.

The Millgate office box was jammed full of junk mail and takeaway flyers with obscenities scrawled all over them in blue biro. Someone had also tried to set fire to them by feeding matches through the slot. I mentioned it to the girl who works behind the counter, she said “I know! I caught her doing it, it was Mrs Armitage from Dunston Road.”

A young man in a track suit was cutting his own hair with a pair of blue plastic handled scissors as he walked down Cross Lane. He had no mirror and was feeling the hair at his temples with his left hand as he snipped with his right.

On the landing, Saj said the Yardies had been threatening him again so during a quiet spell he nipped over the road to the gun shop to buy a bullet proof vest.He returned without one; “They were four hundred quid so I didn’t bother.”